That was a telemarketer, it had nothing to do with the situation in my basement. And by situation I mean drunk woman.

I have a lot of empathy for telemarketers. In case you don’t know how it works, telemarketers have a script that is devised by marketing psychologists, or “assholes” as they’re known within the medical community. The script is all these poor telemarketers know. It's broken up into a series of yes or no questions that hope to rope you into an engaged response, and then they have scripted responses to your responses depending on whether you say yes or no. The vast majority of the answers telemarketers get to these inane questions is “no”, “fuck you don’t call my house”, or “I hope a man with no bullets in his gun uses it to bludgeon you repeatedly until you die an incredibly awkward death”.

If a poor hopeless telemarketer is very lucky they’ll call me, which is what happened today:

“Good morning Mister Abernathy, how are you today?”

“My name isn’t Abernathy.”

“Oh. Well...good morning, how are you today?

“The girl in the basement finally stopped screaming, so that’s a thing.”

“Oh. Um. How are you enjoying your current phone service provider?”

“Is that a trick question? I have an erection."

“That’s...Are you happy with your current phone service provider?”

“I already told you, I’m visiting bonertown. Look I don’t have a lot of time, my dead grandma is yelling something about gremlins again and I have to go ice my fist which is still swollen after I punched that polar bear, do you have a pamphlet or a number I can reach you directly at plus your name and your address and hopefully a picture of yourself playing Words With Friends on the loo?”

“............”

“Hello?”

“Please hold while I transfer you to a supervisor.”

I got disconnected while holding for the supervisor. Zombie Grandma (or ZG as I like to call her) isn’t actually here, but Abigail’s screaming again, I’d better go talk to her.